Experts say Khalil’s arrest is a ‘clear effort’ to silence pro-Palestinian speech in violation of First Amendment freedoms.
The contentious arrest of Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, who played a key role in organising the pro-Palestine protests at the Ivy League campus last year, has sparked outrage and raised concerns about free speech protections in the United States.
Khalil, a 29-year-old Palestinian student, was arrested from his university residence in New York’s upper Manhattan over the weekend by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, who said they would revoke his permanent residency – popularly known as a green card – at the behest of the Department of State. Though no federal charges have been pressed against Khalil.
“This is the first arrest of many to come,” President Donald Trump wrote on Monday on his Truth Social platform, describing Khalil as “a radical foreign pro-Hamas student”.
In his first week into the presidency, Trump had pledged to deport students who joined protests against Israel’s war on Gaza that swept US university campuses last year. Students demanded universities divest from companies linked to Israel and a ceasefire to end the war that has killed more than 61,000 people, according to the Government Media Office in the Gaza Strip.
Trump has also threatened to halt federal funding for schools, colleges, and universities if they allow what he called “illegal protests”. Days before Khalil’s arrest, Trump axed $400m in federal funding to Columbia University.
So, can a green card be revoked? What kind of protections do its holders have? And how does this fit into the broader context of student protests in the US and free speech?
Khalil served as the lead negotiator for the pro-Palestinian student protesters at Columbia – a role that required him to speak to university officials and the media. Before his arrest on Saturday, Khalil told the Reuters news agency that he was concerned about being targeted by the government for speaking to the press.
“Clearly, Trump is using the protesters as a scapegoat for his wider agenda [of] fighting and attacking higher education and the Ivy League education system,” he told Reuters.
“As a Palestinian student, I believe that the liberation of the Palestinian people and the Jewish people are intertwined and go hand-by-hand, and you cannot achieve one without the other,” he told CNN last year.
“I always say that we are the lucky ones that made it here to speak for our people who are under oppression in Palestine and across the refugee camps and the Palestinian cities,” he said.
Khalil completed his master’s degree from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs in December 2024.
He was granted a green card last year. His wife, who is a US citizen, is eight months pregnant.
The Palestinian student was born and raised in Syria, where his grandparents moved after fleeing Tiberias, now in present-day Israel. More than 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed by Jewish militias in the lead-up to the birth of Israel in 1948. The Palestinians remember their expulsion from their homeland as Nakba, the catastrophe.
Who is Mahmoud Khalil?
He attended Lebanese American University, earning his bachelor’s degree in computer science, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Khalil previously worked at the British embassy in Beirut from 2018 to 2022, according to the Middle East Eye site. He was the local manager for the Syria Chevening Scholarship, a prestigious United Kingdom government scheme.
Yes, but it would face legal challenges. Despite being referred to as permanent residents and having similar rights to US citizens, green card holders are not entirely immune from deportation, and their status can be revoked for certain limited conditions, according to experts media spoke to.
These conditions include committing crimes, engaging in fraud, or being deemed a national security threat – and even then, the person may challenge the deportation orders in court.
However, political speech is not a valid reason for revocation, Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), said.
“Green card holders are entitled to the same First Amendment protections as US citizens,” she said. Whitson said Khalil’s arrest is a “clear effort to silence all speech in support of Palestinian rights”.
In Khalil’s case, the burden of proof rests with the government to prove that he violated US immigration laws and that he posed a national security threat.
Zaha Hassan, a human rights lawyer, said it appears that Khalil is being “singled out because of the views he holds”.
“That would violate his right to free speech,” Hassan told media.
Hassan said the Trump administration appears to be arguing that Khalil’s involvement in the protests and his calls for a ceasefire in Gaza amounts to support for Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist organisation by the US government.
“A court will have to decide if speech that supports Palestinian freedom and human rights is the same thing as support for terrorism under the respective immigration statutes,” she said.
A federal court has temporarily blocked Khalil’s deportation. The next hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.
Jenin Younes, a civil liberties and free speech lawyer, said the government appears to be claiming that Khalil constitutes a threat to national security “on rather nebulous grounds: that the government has a policy of combating anti-Semitism around the world, and the protests at Columbia that Khalil helped organise fostered an anti-Semitic environment”.
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